


Mac Hires the Inception Gang

by TheVioletHour (TinternAbbey)



Category: Inception (2010), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Crack, Did I Mention Crack?, Gen, General spoilers for Season 13, Inspired by The Gang Does a Clip Show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 17:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16412777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinternAbbey/pseuds/TheVioletHour
Summary: Mac was wearing, to Arthur's eternal horror, a button-down shirt with thesleeves cut off, which showcased some utterly tasteless tattoos. He plopped himself down next to Cobb, who immediately recoiled and scooted his chair back, then covered it up by pretending he had dropped something."Bloody hell, how much cologne is he wearing?" Eames murmured to Yusuf.Yusuf managed to take a hearty sniff of the air without gagging. "I want to say three colognes. Along with an underlying hint of... paint thinner?"





	Mac Hires the Inception Gang

**Author's Note:**

> So... The Gang Does a Clip Show was not exactly the greatest episode of Sunny. But it _did_ inspire me to write this crazy crossover, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.

"Really, Eames?" said Arthur, brandishing the folder that had been left on his desk. "An assignment from _Ronald McDonald_? Is this your idea of a joke?"

"Ah, yes. The McDonald assignment." Eames, the smug bastard, was lounging at his ease with a large cup of coffee. "Not a joke, I'm afraid. Ask Cobb about it."

"Who's the target?" Ariadne piped up. "The Hamburglar?"

Scowling, Arthur flipped open the folder and glanced back at the first page. "No. It's some guy in Philadelphia who owns a bar called Paddy's."

"Like hamburger patties?"

" _Paddy's_. P-A-D-D-Y—which is _not_ how it's spelled, Eames."

Eames took a nonchalant sip of coffee, still resembling an infuriating, smug bastard. "I told you, go ask Cobb. If I wanted to prank you, Arthur, I'd dream up something a _tad_ more clever than an assignment from McDonald's. I do have taste when it comes to practical jokes."

Arthur hoped it was better than Eames' taste in ties. That shade of orange was atrocious.

But taste in ties aside, the assignment _had_ to be a joke. Only Eames would find it funny to give him some bogus client linked to a fast-food franchise. And only _Eames_ would manage to spell "patties" wrong. 

"Ronald McDonald, indeed," Arthur muttered to himself, retreating back to his desk. "What the hell's next? Captain Crunch?"

* * *

The assignment, it turned out—after an hour-long discussion with Cobb and several aspirins—was not a joke.

Ronald McDonald, more commonly known as Mac, was an actual person. And he ran a bar called Paddy's (completely unrelated to hamburgers) with his chosen target, Dennis. The rest of it, from what Arthur could tell, was vague and highly confusing. Between a scattering of action movie references, bad grammar, and Bible verses, there _was_ a hint that Mac wanted them to extract something, but Arthur couldn't for the life of him figure it out.

So he turned to the stack of photos in the folder.

And wanted to gauge out his eyes at the top photo. Mac seemed to think it important to include a picture of himself—perhaps to warn them of what they were getting themselves into. The man in the photo was shirtless, showcasing an admittedly impressive set of abs, which was then ruined by a black duster that Arthur would never be caught dead in. Even worse, he was posing in front of an object that looked suspiciously like a bike with a dildo attached to it.

Dennis Reynolds, at least, chose to attire himself respectably. There were several photos of Dennis, most of them badly-taken candids, along with one decent picture that featured him staring soullessly into the camera. It gave Arthur the creeps, actually, looking at that photo. Like gazing into the eyes of a serial killer.

He set it aside, then immediately raised his eyebrows at the crayon drawing underneath it.

Somebody (possibly a child?) had scribbled a picture that bore a vague resemblance to Dennis. For some reason the crayon Dennis had his mouth wide open.

And the picture was simply labeled DOL. With a backwards L.

Arthur sighed and opened his near-empty bottle of aspirin. He was _not_ looking forward to the research this would involve.

* * *

The designated meeting place, once the team arrived in Philadelphia, was a restaurant called Guigino's—supposedly the best place in town. It certainly _seemed_ classy on the surface. And Arthur couldn't deny he had a craving for red snapper.

"This is actually a lot... _better_ than I expected," said Ariadne, glancing over the wine list.

Until their client entered the restaurant and announced himself by exclaiming, "What's up, dream bitches?"

Even Eames seemed a little miffed. The aura of offensiveness that clung to Mac's photograph only intensified in person. Mac was wearing, to Arthur's eternal horror, a button-down shirt with the _sleeves cut off_ , which showcased some utterly tasteless tattoos. He plopped himself down next to Cobb, who immediately recoiled and scooted his chair back, then covered it up by pretending he had dropped something.

"Bloody hell, how much cologne is he wearing?" Eames murmured to Yusuf.

Yusuf managed to take a hearty sniff of the air without gagging. "I want to say three colognes. Along with an underlying hint of... paint thinner?"

Cobb cleared his throat and attempted to resume his professionalism. "So, Mr. McDonald. We have your assignment here." He tapped the folder he had brought with him. "But before we begin, I have a few questions for you."

"Yeah, I'm gonna interrupt you for just a second there, bro." Mac had whipped out his cell phone and seemed to be peering at them through his camera app. "Can I get a quick picture? You, you, and you—but not the Mexican or the ugly chick."

Ariadne and Yusuf tried to protest that they weren't ugly _or_ Mexican, thank you very much, but Mac wouldn't stop waving them away until they finally got up from the table. Which left Arthur, Cobb, and Eames. Mac snapped several photos of the three of them, then proceeded to grin at his phone with an expression that sent chills up Arthur's spine.

"Uh, I'm gonna head to the bathroom really quick," said Mac, pocketing the phone. "I'll be right back. _Five_ minutes, tops!"

****

**TWO HOURS LATER**

"Son of a bitch, I am _starving_!" said Mac, hurrying back to the table. He seemed a little flushed.

Arthur tried not to stare at the suspicious wet spot on the front of his pants.

"Where the hell were you?" demanded Cobb. He probably thought he sounded relatively calm, but Arthur knew better. Cobb was one step away from gauging Mac's eyes out with the leftover claws of his lobster dinner. "We've already eaten. We've had _dessert_. And you didn't pick up when I _called_ you."

His scolding had no effect on Mac. "Wait, you guys ordered without me?"

"The red snapper was delicious," said Yusuf, smiling over his empty plate.

"Goddamn it, dude! I wanted the snapper!"

"I think we _all_ wanted to get this meeting over and done with," said Eames. "And we would have, if _you_ hadn't spirited yourself away for two bloody hours."

Now Mac looked absolutely dumbfounded. "No way. It hasn't been two _hours_."

"Yes, it has," Arthur said wearily. "Now do you still want to do business with us or not?"

"Yeah, of course I do!" Mac plopped himself down again, like an enthusiastic dog who didn't seem to understand that he couldn't pee on the couch and get away with it. "But first, somebody needs to get that waiter bitch over here. I feel like I haven't eaten in hours."

"It _has_ been hours," Arthur reminded him, but he flagged down the waiter anyway.

Once the order had been placed, Cobb flipped open the folder and got down to business, before something else came along and stole Mac's attention. "Now, your letter here is a little unclear, Mr. McDonald. And I'm not entirely sure why there's a child's drawing included in the photographs."

This resulted in more confusion from Mac, until Cobb drew out the crayon picture. " _Oh_ , that's not a child's drawing. My buddy Charlie did that. I didn't have any photos of the sex doll on hand, so he offered to do—"

"Wait, _sex doll_?" said Ariadne.

"Well it's not _technically_ a sex doll. It was meant to be a conversational doll, but people _did_ have sex with it."

Cobb was frantically flipping through the folder. "There's no mention of a sex doll in here!"

"Uh, dude, it's right on the first page. Goddamn it, did you even read my letter? It's all right there!"

"Maybe it will make more sense if you repeat it out loud," said Ariadne, somehow managing to sound diplomatic in the midst of possible insanity. "Let's get the facts straight here. I'm assuming you want to extract something from your creepy serial killer roommate—Dennis, right? And it has to do with a sex doll that looks... an awful lot like him?"

"May I ask why there's a sex doll that resembles your roommate?" asked Eames, smirking like an ass over his post-dessert wine.

Mac brushed him aside. "That's actually not important. Just move past it. Now I haven't seen the doll in weeks, but I'm _pretty_ sure Dennis knows where it is. So all I need you guys to do is get inside Dennis' head and walk back out with the sex doll."

Cobb and Arthur exchanged identical looks of horror.

"You know you wouldn't actually _take_ a physical object from the dream world, right?" said Arthur. "When you enter the subconscious, you can only extract an idea. A piece of information, like a password or a bank number. Or in your case, the knowledge of an object's location."

"That doesn't sound right," said Mac, frowning. "I thought you shrunk yourselves until you were _really_ tiny, like the Magic School Bus. That way you can get into people's brains and enter their dreams and shit."

Cobb checked his watch, trying very hard to stave off defeat. "I don't think you fully understand how this works."

"Before we even consider working on your assignment, _you_ need to learn about the dream state," Arthur told Mac. His voice got low and dangerous. "But first, Mr. McDonald, can I ask you an important question?"

"Fire away, dude."

"Why the hell is your hand on my leg?"

* * *

They tried their best to explain things to him—without murdering the stupid crass idiot and peeling off his tattoos one by one. Arthur couldn't say they succeeded much at the extraction level. Mac still seemed to think, despite Cobb repeating himself eight times, that trying to hunt out an idea was lame, and it would be way easier to just grab the physical doll and walk away with it. Out of the fucking _dream world_.

Inception, at least, was an easier concept for Mac's tiny brain to grasp.

" _Ohhhh_ ," he said excitedly, halfway through his red snapper. "So you guys can put it in reverse, too? Like sticking ideas in people's heads?"

"Technically, yes, it _is_ possible," Cobb answered carefully. "But it involves a very intricate amount of work—"

"So you could give an idea to my dad!" Mac sounded like a child who had just learned that Christmas would happen twelve times a year. "Now this wouldn't be a _new_ idea, because my dad already knows he loves me. But he _doesn't_ know it's okay to say it out loud!"

Eames, utterly bored, had built a little house out of toothpicks. "Why wouldn't he say it out loud?"

"So he doesn't sound like a pussy," said Mac. Like it was completely obvious. "But you guys can convince him it's _not_ a pussy thing to say. That way when I tell him, 'I love you, Dad!', he'll reply, 'I love you too, son. Let's play a game of catch!'"

Arthur had seen and heard many sad, pathetic things in his life. This was probably the most pathetic.

Cobb looked as if he desperately wished they were inside a twenty-story building. So he could throw himself off it. "Right. Let's just focus on the first assignment for now—"

"Oh, what about Charlie?" Mac eagerly broke in. "We could plant an idea in _his_ head! Guys, I have been trying to convince him for _years_ that apple skins are toxic, but he keeps on eating them."

It was Yusuf's turn to voice the confusion that filled the table. "I don't understand. Why would you want him to think apple skins are toxic?"

"Well, first of all, it's in the _Bible_ ," Mac explained. "A lot of people don't seem to know this, but after God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he filled all the apple skins with deadly toxins to further punish us for our sins! If you eat too many apple skins, you're gonna die, bro."

"I'm no expert on the Bible," Ariadne spoke up, "but I really don't think that's part of it."

She might as well have punched Mac in the face. He stood up and pointed an enraged finger at Ariadne. "You want to question me on the Bible, bitch? I could kick your ass!"

Cobb, upon realizing that they were dealing with a religious gay _maniac_ , saw the chance to whip out an ultimatum before things got ugly(er).

"Mr. McDonald, _sit down_! I'm about ready to end this right here. You've wasted a tremendous amount of our time so far—so much, in fact, that I have no choice but to charge you triple for this assignment. You can either pay us a _very_ steep fee—right now, in _full_ —or you can walk away and we won't have you blacklisted."

Since the whole disastrous evening first began, Arthur finally started to relax a little. He even allowed himself to smile, feeling relief within his grasp. 

But unfortunately, they all really needed the money. And the smile was slapped right off his face when Mac pulled out his wallet. 

"You guys are in luck!" he said with a grin. 

The bank card belonged to a Mr. Frank Reynolds, but they knew by now that it was better not to ask. 

* * *

A week after the mission failed, Arthur received a phone call from Mac. Due to a stress-induced lack of foresight, he had neglected to block his number. 

"So, I know things didn't go exactly the way we _thought_ they would," Mac began, sounding almost apologetic.

"They might have, if your brainless, asinine friends hadn't decided to join in," Arthur pointed out. He made a mental reminder to get more aspirin. "It doesn't help that Dennis figured out he was dreaming."

"Well, Dennis _is_ the smartest person I know," Mac said proudly. "And we _did_ find out how he feels about me—which was really kind of the whole point."

It seemed that Mac, in his infinite wisdom, had forgotten all about the sex doll. 

"I could have sworn Dennis was implying he didn't want to be roommates with you."

"Oh, no, dude. That's just what he _wants_ us to think! Dennis is kind of like my dad in that way, where he _knows_ he feels a certain way on the inside, but out loud he says the opposite. Speaking of my dad, I still want to do that inception shit where you guys make him think he loves me—which _wouldn't_ be a new idea, by the way! My dad already loves me—"

_Click!_

Arthur hung up and vowed to never, _ever_ do business in South Philly again. 


End file.
